Was Pittsburgh Hoodwinked?

If it were up to you,
would you hire the permanent housing authority maintenance staff to mow trim,
mulch and remove debris from the city landscapes, or a former agency employee
who quit after his trouble with the law was made known publicly? They made the
latter choice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Housing Authority Board
of the city of Pittsburgh voted to hire Pittsburgh Property Maintenance to
handle its landscaping, replacing the long-standing practice of having housing
authority maintenance staff. The $1.6 million contract, to improve the
landscape of public housing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was awarded to the
former employee, Gabriel S. Fontana.

Fontana is a former
Housing Authority employee who left the agency ten years ago, after a local
paper published a story detailing his past federal convictions for cocaine
dealing.

The Housing Authority denies
that Fontana was attached to the project when it hired the company to do the
job. Housing Authority procurement director Kim Detrick said the bidding
process was fair and open. "Our contract is with Pittsburgh Property Maintenance,
not with Fontana. Fontana is on nothing that is in the contract."

Pittsburgh Property
Maintenance was formally created just nine days before it first bid on the job.
The majority partner is Phillip Alan Scott. Scott’s stepson and sometime
business associate is Fontana. Documents indicated that Fontana, not Scott,
signed up to receive updates and online access to bidding materials from the
authority during the bidding process.

The kicker about the
contract is that the firm would hire around ten housing authority residents and
train them in landscaping. It's unclear whether the company has any track
record in training.

Laborers Local 373,
which represents around 34 authority employees who do maintenance work and used
to cut the grass, has filed a grievance regarding the contract, which is going
to arbitration."I believe it is the work of the laborers at the Housing
Authority of the city of Pittsburgh to cut the grass," said William
Brooks, business manager for Local 373 and also the president of the Pittsburgh
Regional Building and Construction Trades Council.

Pittsburgh Property
Maintenance took over the landscaping and was paid $77,835 last year, just a
fraction of the roughly $500,000 it is slated to get for a full lawn care
season.